Every sleep chart gives you a number. Very few of them mention that the number is a population range with a four-hour spread inside it, or that the guidelines deliberately refuse to cover newborns at all. Both of those facts are more useful than the chart.
The hours, by age
| Age | Sleep per 24 hours | Naps |
|---|---|---|
| 0–3 months | No published figure | Scattered across the day |
| 4–12 months | 12–16 hours | In the total |
| 1–2 years | 11–14 hours | In the total |
| 3–5 years | 10–13 hours | In the total |
| 6–12 years | 9–12 hours | Mostly finished |
| 13–18 years | 8–10 hours | None |
Figures from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine's consensus statement (2016). The NHS publishes the same numbers from four months upwards.
Why newborns aren't in the table
The AASM panel looked at the evidence for babies under four months old and then declined to publish a recommendation for them. Not an oversight. A decision. The normal range was too wide and the evidence too thin to put a number on without guessing.
So if your six-week-old doesn't match a chart you found online, it is worth knowing that the people best placed to write that chart chose not to. Observed totals for newborns run from roughly eight hours to roughly eighteen, and both ends of that contain healthy, ordinary babies.
The range is the point
Take the 4–12 month band: twelve to sixteen hours. At eight months old, that spread is four hours a day: the gap between a baby who sleeps twelve and a baby who sleeps sixteen, with both of them sitting comfortably inside the guidance.
A range that wide is a description of a population, not a target for one child. Which makes the useful question less “is she getting enough?” and more “is this the same as it was last month, and how is she when she's awake?” A child who has quietly lost an hour a night over three weeks is worth paying attention to. A child who has always slept near the bottom of the range and wakes up cheerful is just a child who sleeps near the bottom of the range.
This is the honest case for writing it down. Nobody remembers what bedtime looked like five weeks ago, and the trend is the part that carries information, not any single night.
Where the naps go
The totals above include daytime sleep right through to five years old, which is why the numbers fall so steeply: a lot of what disappears between one and five is nap, not night.
- Two naps become one somewhere around 12 to 18 months.
- The last nap usually goes between three and four, though plenty of four-year-olds still take one and plenty of two-year-olds have already finished.
- When a nap drops, the night tends to absorb some of it. The 24-hour total moves less than the daytime does.
The bit nobody writes about: six to twelve
Sleep advice mostly stops at five. So do most tracking apps. But the recommendation for 6–12 year olds is nine to twelve hours, and unlike every band before it, that sleep has to happen in one stretch, at night, against a school start time that does not move.
Work it backwards and bedtime becomes arithmetic. A seven-year-old who has to be up at 7am needs to be asleep by 9pm for ten hours, or 8pm for eleven. Then homework arrives, and clubs, and a tablet, and the wake-up time stays exactly where it was. The sums get harder every year while the target barely moves.
When it's worth mentioning to your doctor
Sleep varies enormously between children and nearly all of that variation is nothing at all. One pattern is worth raising rather than watching: regular loud snoring, or pauses in breathing during sleep, particularly alongside daytime sleepiness that doesn't shift when the child gets more sleep. It's common, it's usually very treatable, and it's the sort of thing a GP or health visitor would rather hear about early than late.
Common questions
Do naps count towards the total?
Up to five years old, yes: the guidance says “per 24 hours, including naps”. The 6–12 figure drops the phrase, because by then most children get all of their sleep at night.
My child sleeps less than the range and seems completely fine. Is that a problem?
The bands describe what most healthy children do, not a threshold each child must clear. A settled child who wakes rested and gets through the day is the stronger signal. What's worth noticing is a change: less sleep than they used to get, with daytime behaviour that has shifted with it.
Do the UK and US guidelines disagree?
Not from four months up: the NHS publishes the AASM's figures unchanged. The NHS does additionally give a newborn range of about 8–18 hours, which the AASM leaves blank.
Doodlebug does the arithmetic
Log a nap in two taps and Doodlebug keeps the 24-hour total for you, alongside what's typical for your child's age, from newborn right through to twelve. We're building it now.
Join the waitlistSources
- Paruthi S, et al. Recommended Amount of Sleep for Pediatric Populations: A Consensus Statement of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. J Clin Sleep Med, 2016.
- American Academy of Sleep Medicine, Child Sleep Duration Health Advisory.
- NHS, Your baby's sleep patterns.
Doodlebug is a tracking app, not a medical service. This page is general information about published sleep guidance and is not advice about your child. If you are worried about your child's sleep, speak to your GP, health visitor or practice nurse.